U.S. Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas introduces bill to deny transgender identity

U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, a Kansas Republican, has introduced a bill that would ban transgender identity.

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Marshall Wednesday introduced the Male and Female Gender Determination Act of 2024, which his office’s press release called “a bill to codify the legal definitions of male, female, and gender to ensure they are based on biology rather than ideology.”

This would write a binary definition of gender into federal law. “Human beings have two—and only two—sexes: male and female, which refer to two body structures (phenotypes) that, during normal development, correspond to one or another gamete—the sperm in men and the egg in women. “, the law says.

“Every person can be either male or female,” and “a person’s gender can be observed or clinically verified at or before birth,” he continues. “Rare disorders of sexual development are no exception to the binary nature of gender. In no case is a person’s gender determined by reservation or self-identification.” The bill states that gender shall not be used as a synonym for sex or as a designation for gender identity or expression.

Separate restrooms, locker rooms and other facilities for men and women based on sex assigned at birth, as well as separate sports teams and leagues organized in this way, “do not constitute unequal treatment under the law,” it continues.

Marshall pointed to his experience as a doctor as justification for the bill. “As a physician who has delivered over 5,000 births, I can confidently say that politicizing the gender of children in order to use them as pawns in your radical woke agenda is not only wrong, but extremely dangerous,” he said in a press release. “I didn’t think we’d need a law to tell us there are only two genders: male and female, but here we are. We must codify the legal definition of sex so that it is based on science, not feelings. With our legislation, we can fight back against the Biden-Harris administration’s attacks on our children.”

In fact, transgender identity is accepted as real by major medical and mental health organizations.

Marshall’s bill will likely go nowhere in the Senate as Democrats still control the chamber until January. U.S. Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., introduced a similar bill in the House in July. The case was referred to the House Judiciary Committee and no further action was taken. However, such legislation could be a harbinger of what will happen in the new Congress with Republican majorities in both chambers under Donald Trump. Marshall’s bill has the support of right-wing groups Heritage Action for America (a subsidiary of the Heritage Foundation, the group behind anti-LGBTQ+ 2025), Concerned Women for America, the Family Research Council and the Alliance Defending Freedom.

This is not Marshall’s first attack on transgender people and LGBTQ+ people in general. In 2023, he introduced a bill to ban gender-affirming care for trans minors nationwide, as well as a bill to ban federal funding for such care for trans people of all ages. Not a single bill was passed. In 2021, he introduced similar but equally unsuccessful bills. In 2022, he led an effort to control LGBTQ+ content in children’s television programming, which also went nowhere, as did his plan that same year to block school meal funding in protest of Biden. Administration support for LGBTQ+ rights.

His latest bill was introduced on Transgender Day of Remembrance, an annual holiday that honors transgender people who have died as a result of violence.